Others think of it as mixed in together and entangled with everything else about us, such as a candle with different colors of wax mixing and solidifying within and throughout it.
What a lovely way of putting it!
I believe, however, that with proper education and better access to the supports we need, that being autistic won't be such a terrible experience for us or our families (not that it's always a terrible experience as it is now, but certainly for many of us it has been). Someday, I should think, it won't be much more painful for us than it is for someone who needs a wheelchair or eyeglasses.
Nice one! "Disability" belongs less to the individual than to the society which "disables".
B"H
The worth of a human being is not what one does. It is who one is.
A utilitarian would think otherwise.
"The only thing that allows evil to triumph, is the indifference of good men".
How would you rate the worth of a kind person, who could stop a tragedy, but didn't because he was a coward?
Or someone with good intent, but caused much pain?
Determining someone's worth is not a one-sided decision. What you do in life, can also determine who you are. Although poetic, I believe your statement to be false.
I don;t think they should find a cure... many great scientists were/are aspies, i don't want to be cured, if i was absolutely forced to be cured i would... write down eveyhting before it.
I just found out that scientists are determined to look for a cure for autism. But the Aspies seem to have a problem with this cure. They say that we don't need a cure, why is that? Are they happy being Aspie? I'm an Asperger's and for some reason I'm not proud of it.
What's wrong with curing it? If you guys think we shouldn't find a cure for Asperger's or high functioning autism. Why don't we find a cure for the ones who are low functioning?
What's the deal with this issue? I'm new to researching the disorder, so please don't be offended.
Lucario,
Why would we be offended? It's a legitimate question!
It's not necessarily the *idea* of a 'cure for autism' that rankles us; it's the *ramifications* of what would be *done* with the 'cure'!
Watch X-Men III: The Last Stand; there's a pretty good parallel. Researchers find a way to suppress the 'mutant gene', and promote it as a 'cure for mutants'. Some mutants like the thought; others know that the public fears them, and get scared that they'll be *forced* to be 'cured', and that an essential part of who they are will be taken from them against their will!
Not surprisingly, it leads to bloodshed.
Now, substitute 'autistic' for 'mutant', and you can kinda see where we're coming from.
One of the things that Autism Speaks is promoting is pre-natal genetic testing. On one hand, it's not a bad thing to *know* if a child runs a risk of autism, so that parents will be *prepared* for that possibility. On the other, we run the risk of turning that screening into a eugenics program, aborting potentially autistic babies so that the 'defective genes' won't be propagated.
Some of history's greatest geniuses and creative people were thought to be autistic, or at least showed autistic traits: Einstein, DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Beethoven, Mozart, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford, just to name a few. Question: if we 'cure autism', what happens to the *genius* that people like them have? What happens to the creative ability? What happens to the advances that people like them could come up with? Is it all *removed* from the gene pool forever?
And do we have the moral right to remove *any* of that from the gene pool?
Granted, not every autistic person is going to be another Einstein, but why take the chance on *losing* that potential?
You say you're not proud of being an Aspie; why?
Is it because you've seen a lot of *very* negative depictions of autistic people in the media? Generally, a *very* high percentage of Auties and Aspies who don't feel good about their condition are that way *because* they've seen too many negative things about autism!
Take a look at Autism Demonized; a *lot* of the parent-written literature on autism - including books by the *founder* of Cure Autism Now (now Autism Speaks) - use terms like "soulless", "beast-like", "alien", "possessed by demons", "stolen by fairies", and other *horrendously dehumanizing* terms to describe US!
And the people who write this crap are *praised* for it!!!
So when these very same people talk about 'finding a cure for autism', what are they *really* working for? What result do they *really* want?
What do they *really* think of US???
So we're kinda leary when they talk about a 'cure'...
-BobB
Why are you "happy" as an Aspie? It's a question.
Are you happy being you?
Well I am happy being me
I have gifts to offer the world, but I also could really use gifts from the world
for example...
Today, I had special educators lining up at my door to get a copy of the teacher IEP meeting forms I just created - they absolutely LOVED them!!
I just hope they give me a good-natured call when I forget to show up for a meeting. I have big time management issues
Lucario
this cure thing sounds as though I am not wanted or appreciated.
if you cured me who else would spend hours of their weekend happily hyperfocused on a world-class form?
They should still pursue making a cure & it dosent have to be mandatory. I know I would go straight for it but a lot of aspies wouldnt & I pay my respects to them. But yeah we should not stop science, I dont want my kids to go through what I did.
I don't know about you, but if someone is diagnosed with low functioning autism, I think I would feel bad for that person & try to help him by finding a cure & letting him live a normal life.
Maybe we should just let our cancer & aids victims die slowly rather then try to save them.
The scientists are only trying to use their judgement to help as many people as possible.
It wont be mandatory because we need aspies for our computer programmers, technicians & all our other skills.
Once they find a cure & the dust settles, things will be better, I know it can be unusually hard to except a small change but its for the better.
He might definetly be right, but by going against a cure, hes putting himself in front of the very low functioners that want to be normal, sounds pretty selfish to me.
What about the severe ones that can't talk, do they have a say in this?
I believe that if they find a cure & want to make it mandatory, they should first do a check to see if that person is going for Aspergers or Autism skilled jobs like computer programming, graphic desing, tech, anything in math, making TV shows like....Pokémon, ect..
No matter what, if they make it mandatory to cure all aspies were gonna have a problem. All our technology's gonna die, computer softwares gonna come a pretty fast halt, computers will basicly be inoperable, no one will know how to program the computers we have in todays cars.
by the time they come out with a cure, they'll understand that we need aspies & high functioners. I think we can both agree that scientists know what their doing.
It might be worth noting that the first to be euthanized in 1939 were several thousand physically and mentally disabled children - including autistics.
The scientists who developed that program went on to larger fish later.
It began with autistics then....
Jeff,
It's worth noting that Hans Asperger referred to autistics as "little professors" so that they'd *have* value to the Third Reich, and wouldn't be killed as "defectives".
-BobB
It might be worth noting that the first to be euthanized in 1939 were several thousand physically and mentally disabled children - including autistics.
The scientists who developed that program went on to larger fish later.
It began with autistics then....
Jeff,
It's worth noting that Hans Asperger referred to autistics as "little professors" so that they'd *have* value to the Third Reich, and wouldn't be killed as "defectives".
-BobB
Nice to think so, but not real likely. First, I'm pretty sure the "Little Professors" designation was not meant to signify any sort of academic achievement. Asperger didn't mean that they should be awarded degrees and high-profile government jobs. So, if they had any value, besides being interesting anomalies, it was in Asperger's own hope that they might be real professors later. That was something he wasn't going to prove to the Reich in any way that would change public policy toward aspies. Even if they did have value to Asperger, that didn't mean they had value to anyone else in the Reich. That was actually an argument Asperger tried to make before his school was bombed. No idea if any of the other Nazis were ever won over. Somehow, I doubt it. The fact that one or more of his original test subjects survived to adulthood doesn't mean any more than that Asperger had enough power to keep them as subjects.
Second, Asperger reached his conclusion that aspies might have value almost 15 years after thousands had already been exterminated. Asperger didn't have a lot to do with the plight of autistics during the main years of the Holocaust.
And third, his interest wasn't for autistics - it was for a few aspie children with savant abilities. The rest of the autistics - however few were left at that point - could go spin, as far as he was concerned.
Jeff,
Ok, I stand corrected... 
-BobB
Nice to think so, but not real likely. First, I'm pretty sure the "Little Professors" designation was not meant to signify any sort of academic achievement. Asperger didn't mean that they should be awarded degrees and high-profile government jobs. So, if they had any value, besides being interesting anomalies, it was in Asperger's own hope that they might be real professors later. That was something he wasn't going to prove to the Reich in any way that would change public policy toward aspies. Even if they did have value to Asperger, that didn't mean they had value to anyone else in the Reich. That was actually an argument Asperger tried to make before his school was bombed. No idea if any of the other Nazis were ever won over. Somehow, I doubt it. The fact that one or more of his original test subjects survived to adulthood doesn't mean any more than that Asperger had enough power to keep them as subjects.
Second, Asperger reached his conclusion that aspies might have value almost 15 years after thousands had already been exterminated. Asperger didn't have a lot to do with the plight of autistics during the main years of the Holocaust.
And third, his interest wasn't for autistics - it was for a few aspie children with savant abilities. The rest of the autistics - however few were left at that point - could go spin, as far as he was concerned.
yhis is interesting information, Gitchel. What are your sources?
I should also point out that I believe that a real cure would be an impossibility - after all, autistic people have structurally different brains, not merely differing chemical levels.
Generally, when I debate the cure idea, it is because I believe the myth of the cure is damaging, not because I believe that the cure is going to happen.
The majority of autism fundraising money currently goes into cure research, rather than support services. If this could be redirected into something that would actually help autistic people, rather than aiming to destroy them, things would be much better for autistics.
A cure might be possible, though it would probably be necessary to change the physical structure of the brain. We're a long way from that. Research into finding a cure may help us understand the how the brain works, how NTs and Autistics differ and why, perhaps even how we could combine the benefits of autism and NTness.
GnosisRoads,
Like EvilZakkie said, the majority of fundraising money goes to 'cure research'; the vast majority of *that* money is going for finding a way to do pre-natal screening for autism. If they *find* this 'cure', what'll it do for people who are already here?
Nothing.
So, if it does nothing for people who are here, how is it a 'cure'?
Awhile back, a pre-natal genetic screening test was found for Down's Syndrome; since that time, over 90% of Down's Syndrome fetuses have been aborted!
And if they find something for autism, it'll happen the *exact* same way!
So why do a lot of costly research when you can just do genetic screening and *abort* all those potentially burdensome autistic fetuses?
This is why the 'find a cure' argument is so deceptive; they're *not* looking for a cure, they're looking to eliminate autism from the gene pool!
And therein lies the myth of the 'autism cure'.
"How could anyone *not* want to find a cure?"
People are *naturally* going to want to find a cure for a disease; it's part of their compassionate nature. The problem is that their compassion is being subverted. People don't realize just exactly what the 'cure' is all about; all they hear is that "autism is a terrible disease that effects 1 in 150 children", so they go along with the 'hope' that a cure can be found.
Do you think that the general public would be so compassionate and fund autism research if they were told "We must practice genocide in order to stop autism"?
Probably not, but you never know...
Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." (italics mine)
Bottom line: The curebies want autistic *genocide*!
They're just *sugar-coating* it to make it acceptable...
-BobB
GnosisRoads, it would appear that we are not going to agree, as the basic ethical precepts we are debating on are out of synch - it would be like having a health care debate with someone who believed that the economy was more important than human life. It can't be done.
EvilZakkie, I am somewhat offended that you cast me as someone who cares more about the economy than human life. I care about both but if push comes to shove then I care more about human life. Only somewhat because you have been nothing but fair and honest to me in this thread and my beliefs may be deeply offensive to you.
I took pieces/parts out of your posts as I am not posting on the content of this thread, but rather posting on the content of your words directly.
GnosisRoads, take a moment and re-read EvilZakkie's post, that one sentence. He did not say that you were someone who cares more about the economy than human life. He said that you are debating out of sync and used that as an example of people debating out of sync.
I think half the arguments on this forum would not happen if people would refrain from putting words into people's mouths. Seems that often enough you do not read the words as written, but rather bend and twist them, whether intentionally or not, into something completely different than what was said by the person posting.
That is, unless I am missing something....which has happened maybe a million or so times in my years of life.
Rant over.
Perhaps you are right, Korrigan, but given the.......ummmmmm "high spirits" on this thread some other example would probably have been better.
Oh heck, they show up all over the place, which is why I ranted in the first place. Sometimes, it is best to back away from the keyboard and just decline to discuss it anymore, at least with that poster, that is what I am learning.
EvilZakkie has been a very pleasant person for me to deal with, and actually, most people on the forum have been.
But this forum may not be a place for everyone to hang out on, either. (I am not suggesting you, I am being general.)
I think oftentimes it is much better to read, re-read, and re-read again before you post your reply, oh yes, and then, if anything seems unclear, ask. You will hopefully get a reply that will clarify whether or not your original thoughts were appropriate, right?
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